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Three Americans walk into an English club… and this is not a joke! One of our most loyal native speaker visitor, Sara, has been stunningly eager to advertise the club ever since she first joined us. About a year ago she rushed back to her homeland after hearing Balázs using his late-night Scottish accent, but now she’s back and fully recovered. (The rest of the organizers are on the mend.) Sara has made our heart melt with one of her Facebook posts in which she explains how difficult it must be for anyone without a great support system to immigrate to Hungary. “TAKE FIVE – English Language Club has been my safety net for sanity when things seem rough…” These kind and reassuring words could be considered a present for our 6th birthday.

6:17 pm. The spotlight is gone forever, and there’s no way to replace the bulb. Only a spherical lampshade on the ceiling is scattering some light around the club room while half a dozen of lamps are timidly glowing in the background as moral support. We should already be sitting around the table introducing ourselves, but probably thanks to the unexpected deluge raging out on the streets, only a few people are wandering around bemused. What we have in common with TV series: every season begins with the appearance of interesting new characters. I am more than excited to welcome three newcomers. I’m used to hearing “oh, my friend told me about the club” from new visitors, so my heart skips a beat when Józsi tells me he just googled “English club Budapest”.

“The crowd is overwhelming,” said I to greet tonight’s guests. Balázs kindly encourages me to drop the irony. He is right.

What thoughts or feelings does fall/autumn evoke in you? We agreed this would make a good introductory question for today. The room is soon filled with laughter as most people associate this season with fairly depressive thoughts. The dramatic effect could be boosted with the pouring rain… if the place had any windows. I can’t seem to smother the urge to share my favorite quote from David Letterman: “Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.” A heartfelt giggle erupts from four people as a way of showing empathy towards the aspiring club organizer.

We have new cards for forming groups. Balázs very wisely pointed out that orange cards with only numbers on them are easy to mix up. Therefore, he created cards of different colors. We had to polish our negotiation skills to find the golden mean between practicality and enthusiasm. His original plan was to put numbers on the colored cards in order to provide a “multi-sensory experience” for the people. I suggested we should not get carried away with such luxurious dreams. Colors will be just enough. Era helps us out by joining a two-member group in one of the corners. Today’s topic is “ALL BY OURSELVES?”, an experimental topic about extraterrestrial life. We decided to try topics that rely more on our imagination than our up-to-dateness on current issues.

Balázs and I are standing at the bar. The door opens and she walks in: a lady with ginger hair and glasses. She’s no stranger, she’s our lovely colleague with whom we joined forces to organize a six-day English course a month ago. I’m wondering if she’ll spot the outline of Mark Hamilton’s dead body on the club room floor – a prop that served as an important part of our murder mystery game for the English course.

Before we go on a fifteen minute break, we announce the launch of an unprecedented TAKE FIVE contest. Whoever attends at least four sessions or sends us a topic during the fall season will be put on the list of possible winners. In the end, we are going to pick a random person who wins a TAKE FIVE T-shirt. (Something I didn’t manage to find after having washed all of my clothes.)

Zoli is passionately presenting his group’s crazy invention.

7:55 pm. Let the fun begin! Just to get the ball rolling, we bring back our “whacky invention” game, but this time the groups have to invent a piece of equipment that helps defend ourselves against hurricanes. To all language learners’ delight (that is, all of the non-natives), by this time there are three Americans sitting in the room. What an ironic coincidence that we are dealing with hurricanes. The selected speakers from each group take the hot seat on the podium to present their inventions. They never fail to amaze me with their creativity and exceptional sense of humor. One of the things is a ukulele which, when being played, generates a protective bubble around itself.

For the last 45 minutes we put on a storytelling show – a kind of thing we usually have mixed feelings about. The concept of one person speaking while an audience is listening does not necessarily harmonize with the concept of a conversation club. Nonetheless, this one seems to work out well as we have spiced it up with an interactive feature. The game is the following: one person takes the hot seat and begins to share a memorable summer story with the audience. At random moments, Balázs rings the bell and the storyteller freezes. Anyone from the audience can guess how the story is going to continue. We can hardly breathe as born stand-up comedian Jake presents his story of a weird girl chasing him with her love. It seems that Americans are here to bring our talk shows up to standard.

9:00 pm sharp. Let’s give a big hand to Jake! The podium is empty now. I glance at my phone and call it a day. We always take pride in being so precise. I thank them all for being here tonight, concluding my brief monologue with a modest, almost undetectable bow. Meanwhile, I’m very awkwardly trying to avoid making eye contact with them.

Where are we heading? I came to realize a while ago that running an English club requires an incredible degree of innovation and creativity. If we set out to be up-to-date with our topics, and we respond to several events as they are happening in the world, it is then inevitable that we constantly redefine ourselves as time passes. After six years of persistent (and at times painstaking) work, we have now decided to raise the club to a whole new level. From this season on, TAKE FIVE is diving headfirst into the world of charity. Not only do we want to donate money to certain organizations, but we also plan to appear at carefully selected institutes with special tailor-made club sessions.

If everything goes according to plan, the first such institute will be the Tüskevár school where I currently work. It would be a great honor to bring an extraordinary TAKE FIVE session to the school at the beginning of February.

I am strolling down memory lane – taking it slow because there are too many places to stop at. In 2011, we started out in a room overflowing with all the five people and a few packets of salty sticks. We had absolutely no idea how it was going to be. Today we host meetings with fifteen to twenty guests in a nice bar where the backmost room is reserved for us. After months and years of painful struggle, the club began to live a life of its own. Besides the loyal hard core, it has been a true honor to welcome an enormous group of newcomers recently. One of my favorite stories is a guy who told us that he had taken a flyer half a year before so that he could visit us one day. And there he was.

After long weeks of silence, allow me to give you an overview of how we spent our final session in 2016, and also share a few secrets with you about the covert affairs of the club.

Christmas time

On December 15th we brought back the genuine TAKE FIVE Christmas spirit, like we always do. We began with a few rounds of word chain to get the Christmas bulb rolling. Instead of the regular envelopes, we pulled off a prank on the unsuspecting guests. I stood up and said: “We are having a little technical problem because we forgot to bring the envelopes, but…” We had hidden a tiny slip of paper under the top of each mushroom on the tables. They found out the secret quite quickly. On the slips there was a list of questions related to how we celebrate or what we think about Christmas.

There were no speakers on the stage this time since we did not intend to spark any debate on the topic. Instead, Balázs asked questions like “What is the worst present you’ve ever received?” or “What was your most awkward Christmas moment?” It was incredibly amusing. I finally had a chance to share a couple of childhood traumas, including a disgusting Santa Claus toy that started playing some dreadful music when you approached it. The bullies in elementary school were nowhere near the experience – although as far as the Santa toy is concerned, we were able to lock it up in the chamber, as opposed to the former.

One of the best shots turned out to be our fairly new invention, the Alternative Universes, combined with the Christmas theme. As Woody Allen would say, “I am flabbergasted” by the level of creativity and ingenuity of our guests. Did you know that in the Animal Universe, animals eat roasted politicians on Christmas Eve? The pinnacle of this game was a Jingle Bells song with alternative lyrics sung by the citizens of the Superhero Universe. Sing along:

Smashing through the snow
In a one-horse open plane
All the skies we go
Flying all the way
Bells on Batman’s ears
Making heroes laugh
Oh what fun it is to fly with Santa Claus tonight

Spider webs, spider webs
Shining all the way
Oh what fun it is tonight in an invisible plane
Laser eyes, glowing capes
Soaring all the way
Oh what fun it is to wear your Christmas underwear…

…on the outside.

The main attraction of the night was the all-time favorite, the ever-green classic (labels we arbitrarily stigmatized the game with): the Christmas Taboo, which means forty-eight Taboo cards that we created ourselves. The cards contain words that are connected to Christmas or winter in general. We never play this game with teams. We just sit around the table as one big group, and it’s free for all. As the ultimate motivating factor, we promised a handful of szaloncukor for the winner – which we later regretted. (Contrary to popular belief, there is no proper translation for szaloncukor as it is a Hungarikum solely produced in Hungary and Slovakia.)

After Orsi had won the game by a landslide, she presented us with an offer. She would give away all her candies if we poured the entire content of the two bags onto her. It would have been hard to resist. Here’s the evidence:

What you didn’t know about…

You may still remember that our club once organized an extraordinary session for a group of high school students. We decided to revisit this brand new tradition at the beginning of December. I had an opportunity to meet a lovely group of eighth graders during my first teaching practice in the fall semester. I truly enjoyed all the time we spent together, and I felt by the end that I was not yet ready to let them go. I went back one day and invited them to a special TAKE FIVE meeting organized exclusively for them. They looked a bit puzzled first, needless to say, but on the 7th of December – the first Wednesday in the history of our club – ten of my students showed up (and went straight into the darts room).

The story did not end there. On the 15th, two guys came back to see a regular meeting of ours. They said they would join us for future sessions as well, and that they would try to drag some more classmates along. I am looking forward to seeing them, for a number of reasons.

The show must go on

The club is scheduled to reopen its gates on February 2nd. Our plan is to keep the well-known and well-working TAKE FIVE atmosphere with a format very similar to what you have seen before. My only proposal at this point is to make it slightly more flexible, and maybe broaden our horizons by experimenting with new things. You are welcome to assist us along the way. Feel free to send us feedback on any aspects the club, new activities to try out, not to mention topic recommendations.

Ah, how soon the summer goes by. You just blink one – because the darned sweat got into your eyes – and another one (damned blinding sunlight, I can’t open my eyelids, my pupils will disappear) and it’s gone. But don’t worry, TAKE FIVE will resume soon on the 22nd of September! Don’t forget, it will be a special occasion:

our 5th birthday!

The name of the club is TAKE FIVE, so you can imagine what the fuss is about. There will be a special topic and everything. And speaking of topics: the Topic Hat is about to run out, so we look to you to help us! If you have an idea, don’t hesitate to send it to one of the organisers.
Until then, you have a choice: you can read the brief summer summary, or if you have the time, why not read the longer, creative writing approach featuring the dystopian apocalyptic future.

So, for the short summary:
The summer went pretty well. After serious consideration and evaluating several options, we chose to have the first occasion in Muzikum. We had no idea that we would like the place so much that all of the summer sessions would be there. But we did and it was a good choice. We always had a summer themed game: a whacky summertime invention, a summertime cocktail or a summertime photo album that the members had to act out. Also, the organisers got in touch with their musical side, and after rewriting the lyrics to Walk Off the Earth’s Little Boxes, they performed the new version of the song titled Little Mushrooms. Towards the end most people must have been on holiday, as there were a bit fewer people than before. But that was never a problem, and we had fun nonetheless. All in all, it was a good summer to look back on, and now it’s time to look forward to the autumn (or fall for those who prefer US English) season. See you then!

(you can read the creative writing summary below the pictures)

The FALL of mankind

The days of the scorch are gone. We get a few afterburns every now and then, but that’s about it. The long haul to the everlasting winter and soulless cold has begun. Say what you want about heat, but at least it has a soul. It lives, pulsates around you, and like most living things, it can kill you. But I’d rather die at the hands of something that at least gives the impression of life rather than just a passive destructive force, like cold. It’s not even destructive… it just forces out all life. Like darkness, it creeps up, non-threatening at first, but then you find yourself cornered into a small hole, and you know it’s gonna be over soon. Best you can do is hope, but all you can do is fend off insanity. Well, some can do it, anyway. Not all of us. But now’s not the time to reminisce. Now’s the time to try and do whatever we can. For whatever reason you can tell yourself. Tell it hard enough, you might just believe it.

We rounded up whomever we could find. As the deserts started freezing over, it became easier. Those that survived came looking our way. Of course we can’t stay long in one place – I can already feel the ground here getting colder and colder each morning. All life shrivelling up, becoming a frozen memento of what it once was. Soon that would be us. Unless we come up with something. If there is anything to come up with.

I was tasked with gathering information. Whatever information I could get my hands on: art, manuals, a kid’s drawing on a freakin’ fridge, a flyer for some club. I got some good stuff over the time. It isn’t much, but then again, my whole mission is crazy. It is meant to guide those that will come after us. The future generations, maybe the ones born during the fall, perhaps even children of the winter. You never know when you might visit for the first time. You never know how long you might stay.

This one thing I found, it’s really interesting. Reminds me of a world I used to know. Used to be home. It used to be warm there. It’s just a flyer, nothing fancy. Colourful background, mainly orange. It’s an out of focus picture of people sitting around a table, talking. Having a good time. Once there was writing in the foreground, but the powerful rays of the sun have seen to it that it become faded. All you can make out now are ‘IAK IV’. Although some say the first letter is a ‘T’. Whatever it is, it used to be a language club. During the days of the scorch it was quite popular.

I went down to the archives to find out more about this club. It was pretty much the same until, a few months ago, the name ‘Muzikum’ started popping up. Quite a few people visited the club. Their first meeting there went good enough. That place is pretty good. Dear Lord, back in those days you could go outside without protective gear. They must have enjoyed the sunlight and the warm. Letting it shine over them, heat their skin, fill them with energy. Like a loving caress. A warm hand running over you, yet untouchable. Before it became a strangling, burning grip… This club must have been doing something right. The second time they were at this new place they had even more visitors. I can’t tell much from these pictures, but it seems like they were acting out an imaginary holiday in three frames. Seems like fun. The organisers even rewrote the lyrics to a song and performed it. They also took imaginary trips to alternative universes, like a fairy tale or a superhero universe. How sweet. How innocent. Neither of those words mean much anymore.

Summer was a privilege back then, a time to rejoice and welcome the life it brought. We never thought we could have too much of it. After a while the sessions got homelier with less visitors, as if people were on holiday or something. Still, the club carried on and it looks like good fun. Sometimes they were inside, sometimes they could go outside. Their games are clearly of an era of hope. They always had something related to summer – a summertime cocktail, a summertime invention, summertime this, summertime that. I cringe from the phantom heat burning me just by reading about these.
Well, seems like this club had a good run. They say as the cold came, they moved underground. I suppose that’s as good an idea as any. Who knows, it might even make a difference. They might even carry on, keep humanity together with their English speaking and fun games.

I sometimes think that we won’t make it. More often than not, to be honest. I should be keeping hope alive, but… I don’t know. I don’t know if we can survive on the surface. It will become cold and unwelcoming. The rigid, uncompromising cold will take over, step by step, degree by degree. Those that are not frozen will have to endure for as long as they might, watching their breath billow away from them only to disappear in the chilly air. Just a puff of air, an ominous harbinger of what is to come. Of what will happen to all of us. Snuffed out by the cold, withering and alone, drained of all energy. At least in this club you wouldn’t be alone. If the cold’s about to get you, you may as well have fun and spend your time with a bunch of cool people. I guess that’s better.

I think I’ll go to this ‘IAK IV’ club or ‘TAK IV’ or whatever it was originally called. I need to have a look to see what would I find. If they are still there. Who knows, we may even see the sun again. But at least we’ll be together, no matter what.

On 19 May the TAKE FIVE club passed another milestone on the freeway of its five-year history. We had the immense pleasure and honor of welcoming 10 first-year secondary school students to an extraordinary one-off session. In collaboration with their English teacher we paddled into uncharted waters to discover and embrace a long-dormant possibility of our club.

“Hi there, Take Five organizers! I’m Svoboda Róbert, English teacher from Budapest. Balázs knows me…” That’s how it all began. We agreed that a regular session would be deep water for the students with all the strangers (not to mention the psychological trauma Balázs is likely to cause with his mere appearance), so we put our heads together and decided to organize a one-time special event, elegantly squeezed in between two scheduled meetings. Our goal was to keep the original, academically acclaimed and at the same time world famous TAKE FIVE format, but adjust everything to the proficiency level and age group.

One speaker from each group summarized their discussion in a few sentences. On the tables you can see our newly-acquired mushrooms that the groups can turn on once they finish.

Robi was brave enough to join one of the preceding events to sit down with us and help us lay down the foundations. In harmonious cooperation we imposed our brilliant ideas on him, which he tacitly and respectfully accepted. Our final plans included an ice-breaker, three of the topics we had already used at the club, and two amusing picture-based creative writing tasks. The session lasted for two hours with a ten-minute break.

Despite the fact that I am quite used to being surrounded by ladies, I was preparing for the event with a more or less healthy gender ratio in my mind. If you take a brief look at any of the photos, you may see how close I got. I think I will never be able to write down in a public blog how terrified I felt when I saw ten teenage girls walk into the club in a straight line. They all settled down and we dived right into the introduction part. One of our most favorite ice-breakers is a game called alphabet, in which we scatter the letters of the alphabet all over the floor. Then we ask questions and everyone has to find the starting letter of their answers. The girls became pretty excited upon hearing the questions “What’s your favorite band/singer?” and “What’s your favorite TV show?”. I turned out to be the only one who was having trouble coming up with answers and finding the letters.

Robi was giving us a helping hand.

Our lovely guests began to feel more and more comfortable as time passed. I would probably have burst out crying and/or run away if I had been taken to a club like this in the first year of secondary school. But to my astonishment, these girls made themselves feel at home by the end. They were ready to volunteer when it came to summarizing the topics, the room was often filled with laughter, and – as far as I could see – they did enjoy most of what we had prepared with. The session was concluded with a round of applause and a volley of thank-yous.

As the founder of the TAKE FIVE club and as an English teacher, I can confirm that this exceptional occasion was nothing but the first step. From now on we are looking forward to working together with other schools as well to provide more and more students with a genuine English-speaking setting where they have a chance to put theory into practice.

It has been almost two weeks since the last TAKE FIVE session. I swear to God, sometimes those meetings are the only thing that keep me going. When we were asked by the International Multiverse Committee to investigate the gateway and the possible universes we can explore, I didn’t know what I would sign up for. Well, I’ve sure got a handful now. But we have to keep on going. For science.

As I’ve mentioned, it isn’t easy, examining these universes. We never know what twisted world we will set foot on. I mean some universes aren’t so bad: we’ve been to the future, we even met a whole new alien species! But there were some universes that bore an eerie resemblance to ours. I still get chills from the communist society we stumbled upon. Or the one where you are the only person in the whole universe… my blood curdles when I think about it.

The crew is more than satisfactory. It’s a great team, and we complement each other with our individual skill sets. It’s amazing how well-oiled sometimes work goes. Of course, it’s not all easy. But we do try. The experiments are on schedule, and many of our findings may alter the way we think about life and English clubs. The IMC knew what they were doing when they asked us for the job – I can only hope that we’ll continue in the same vein and deliver on the promises that are expected of us.

As the ship’s Speech and Lame Puns Officer it is my duty to check for and analyse all forms of linguistic communication we find in these universes, and try to make a badly formed joke on words out of them. It’s not always easy, but as long as there are inhabitants, we’ll manage. It would be hard to crack a joke about a universe with no-one in it. Although if we called it a blank-verse we might get the literature majors to move there, as long as they don’t notice the hyphen. Well, one can always hope.

The mission was off to a good start, but our work is far from over. We had to send out Era on a special sole expedition. The girl’s got guts, I gotta give her that. I know she can handle herself, but still I worry. Until she returns it’s just Zsombor and I, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. I’ll be interested to see though what she comes back with. I hope it’s not the place where people wear 90s clothes, have 80s hair and talk like in the 50s. Science has so far failed to explain any of those things. They’re just… not natural. All that denim and windbreakers, those curls and waves, and those sounds… I mean if there were a universe where the eyes could vomit and the ears could weep that would be it. I desperately hope for Era’s safe return – this expedition would be lost without her.

Another rainy night in New York. Another TAKE FIVE meeting in Budapest. As the cigarette smoke cleared I knew it would be our Christmasest evening yet. I was a hot detective working a cold case, but the weather was mild and I knew I had long passed my best shape. Still, it was a holiday club meeting and someone had to do the speaking. And if that someone is going to be someone, then that someone is going to be me. With heart full of determination and Era by my side I knew I might just get it done. Or at least give it my damnedest.

The evening began. At first there weren’t many of them there, but I knew better. I knew that this was always the way, and I wasn’t taken in quite so easily. Oh no, not anymore. Not after my heart was broken in Cairo, when I was still young and I thought I could handle an English Club without any bells. Well, not this time. I came prepared. As I rose from my seat they might have expected me to clear my throat, or to even use the regular bell. They had no clue what the night had in store for them. I wasn’t going to beat around the bush anymore; I took out my phone and rang the special Christmas bell application I downloaded earlier. The effect was exactly as I expected – mild amusement with hearty smiles all around. I knew instantly that this would be a good night to be a Take Fiver.

I felt like having a double whisky and a sad tune on the piano, but I got a pot of tea instead. The bell was a nice touch, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let it go into my head. The night was still early and I needed my English at its best. While we waited for the others I thought of playing word chain with a Christmas and winter theme, and I wasn’t wrong. We didn’t always keep to the theme, but hell, who does. People kept arriving, and we were shaping up to be quite a group. It was time for the introductory question and I thought to myself what the hell, I’ll ask them. And they can tell us whatever they want to. So I looked right at them, and with a smile twitching at the edge of my mouth I posed the question straight off: ’So, what do you want for Christmas?’

I could see I hit the spot; they laughed a bit and I could see them trying to come up with a witty answer. I gave them a few minutes and then told them to get to it: tell us their name and gift idea. We all spoke and had a few laughs. Some of the ideas weren’t all that bad, and in the dimmed lights you could see that they were enjoying this make-believe Take Five Santa. All those Take Fivers, eager to get on with it. What a bunch. I knew I couldn’t make them wait any longer. It was topics or nothing, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let them down. Not after they came all the way down here. And not at the last meeting of the season. I was the last to answer, and after that I let Zsombor do his thing. He’s got a way with the envelopes, you see, and he is pretty good with the crowd, too. He seemed to be in his element – he even read out the topic.

The first one was a real doozy: Grammar Nazis. It was a club member topic and a fine one at that. But it seems that fate had all the cards and there was no pass at the checker’s table. As we drew another topic, it started to get suspicious. It was also Noémi’s. That’s TAKE FIVE for you. The discussion went fine, and the speakers really gave it their best. The second topic, that Global Citizenship thing, even sparked a bit of debate, but nothing serious. It seemed everyone had something to say about it, which is nice – we are a conversation club, after all. It was time for the break and I went to the bar to get a beer. It was a long day and a cold one was in order.

It took two seconds for the break to be over, or at least it felt that way. I could hardly get a head start on my beer and already I was faced with a crowd ready to play some of our trademark games. Well, Era, Zsombor, and I came prepared, so we didn’t worry. We had something really special up our sleeves. God, we felt invincible. Even if you’ve been around language clubs as long as we have, it still gets in your head. Like a goddamn rookie after their first introductory speech.

Zsombor had an idea for the first game. As if the night wasn’t thrilling enough, he decided to add another mystery to the table, and had the members solve the story of the sock in the metro. Few people know this, but this used to be an actual case of Zsombor’s. The man’s got an obsession, but who am I to judge him. There are worst things to get riled up about, I guess. The group had no idea about all this and they went merrily about coming up with a story. That’s what being a private eye is, that’s what it comes down to. Telling stories. Hoping they are true. Sometimes desperately needing them not to be.

The groups managed to get us smiling with their crazy ideas. And there was still plenty of crazy to go around. The second round saw to that – we asked them to come up with goofy ways of giving gifts. I knew this woman once. Her idea of a gift was knife in your back, a broken heart to go with it. But these Take Fivers deserve better, and again, they made us laugh. God, you’ve gotta like these people. But the main event was yet to come. Taboo has always been a well-known TAKE FIVE game, but this time regular Taboo wouldn’t do. We knew that, we weren’t born yesterday. That’s why we said to hell with it, we’ll make our own Christmas Taboo. And damn, did we do it.

Not all of us could play, but I didn’t mind. When you’ve played as much Taboo as I have, you can’t look at the world in the same way. Some say it’s a gift, but I don’t know about that. We had just enough cards for Era to join. Zsombor measured the time and I was to investigate. Pretty ironic. Me, a private eye spending day after day looking into people’s dirt, just idly walking up and down seeing if anyone uses the forbidden words on the cards. Kind of fitting I guess. At least this time no-one would get hurt if I find something. The game was a rousing success, and we had shared winners: Regina and Noémi. It was nice to see someone win for a change. In my line of work people usually lose and they usually lose big.

We wished everyone a Merry Christmas and with that the last TAKE FIVE of 2015 was over. I knew we would see each other again in February, but I felt depressed all the same. So I did what I do best: I finished my beer, turned my collar up, and wandered out into the night.

“Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.” — David Letterman

September 17th, 2015, a few minutes before 4:00 pm — we can hardly breathe. It is hot and stuffy in here. I am rolling up my sleeves in front of the mirror and wash my face. We are ready to go. Balázs and I step out of the bathroom and set out towards the lobby on the fourth floor. The venue is Building R on our campus. As we get closer, the indistinct noise of a small crowd fades in. We catch sight of Era, greet her, and the three of us settle down on a desk by the wall. The place is jam-packed with people. There are only a few untaken seats. We are waiting for our turn, perplexed.

It is time. Margit Szesztay announces the TAKE FIVE club and calls our names. I grab the packet of freshly printed flyers and take it to the “stage”. We are in the spotlight. Dozens of freshmen, graduate students and teachers are staring at us curiously. Here we go. The presentation doesn’t take off seamlessly, but that is only how we feel. The audience seems to resonate with us. They respond with laughter to every little joke. Before we finish up, I address the freshmen and encourage them to join us today for our fall season opening. “Thank you very much for your attention.” A round of applause ensues.

A couple of students run to us for flyers and ask about the club enthusiastically. A girl and a boy appear. They would come with us and check out the club, they say. While we are waiting to move on to CD-FŰ, I strike up a conversation with them. Dorina and Dani are both first-year teacher trainees of the freshly reintroduced undivided program. I tell them not to worry about the uninteresting introductory courses. The best is yet to come.

6:00 pm — after having woven our way through the jungle of narrow streets, we arrive at CD-FŰ. The ever-delightful manager lady welcomes us with a smile. I fish the stack of flyers out of my backpack and walk up to her. I feel the bonds between TAKE FIVE and CD-FŰ are becoming stronger. They have shared our event first time since we moved here. We have put their logo on the flyer. She is grateful, and so are we. I hand her about fifteen pieces and she places them on the counter.

There is no crowd today. I count thirteen participants, including the three of us. I am holding the first color envelope in my hand. The topic is “Good intentions”. After a few minutes it turns out to be somewhat philosophical, not easily tangible. Nevertheless, the groups are eagerly discussing it, sometimes going off on a tangent. I decide to bring one more topic in, to resolve the tightening philosophical atmosphere. “Cursive writing is obsolete, or is it?” says the description. This will do, I think.

Around 8:00 pm — we are smack dab in the middle of the game. The groups are inventing funny university courses, such as “How to be cool I.” Three more guests arrive and sit down at the farthest table. To my great surprise, James Leavey walks in. He used to be my language practice teacher in the first year. I have been expecting him for a while. He spots the beers behind us and decides to join. On the way to the bar we discuss the problem of quantity. In Hungary, a glass of beer is the small one. A pint of beer is more, but in many countries it is not the same amount as a korsó here. It is not a challenge to bridge the cultural gap, though: he orders a glass of Soproni, in Hungarian.

The fall season of 2015 is in full swing now. I kindly remind everyone to pester us with topic ideas as the black cylinder hat is getting more and more hollow. Contribute to this new season with your precious thoughts and get ready for the upcoming session! The forecast says there is an impending swarm of freshmen arriving on Thursday, 6:00 pm. Besides them, we are missing a few old dogs. Are you joining us next time?

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TAKE FIVE is a conversation club that gives you the opportunity to refresh, practice and improve your English every second week in the heart of Budapest. Spend three hours in the best possible atmosphere, where language development and entertainment are in perfect balance. Don't hesitate to join us!